


No Exceptions

by Anonymous



Category: Succession (TV 2018)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Background Naomi Pierce/Kendall Roy, Emotional Infidelity, F/F, F/M, Open Relationships, Pining, Relationship Negotiation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:02:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26153893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: "No family, no family-fuckers," Tabitha says. "Got it."As she gets to know Roman's family, that promise is an easy one to keep. Until suddenly, it's not.
Relationships: Naomi Pierce/Tabitha, Roman "Romulus" Roy/Tabitha
Comments: 10
Kudos: 17
Collections: Anonymous, Flash Fuck Around 2020





	No Exceptions

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GlassesOfJustice](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GlassesOfJustice/gifts).



> Thank you for picking such interesting pairings and providing such encouraging prompts! I hope this is something like what you had in mind.
> 
> Thanks to angelsaves for the beta!

"Just so you're aware, I don't do monogamy," Tabitha tells Roman Roy over drinks at his grotesquely enormous apartment. It's their third time getting together, but the first time she's been at his place. When he invited her over, she assumed _drinks_ meant _fucking_ —fucking finally, too, she was getting a little tired of meeting in hotel bars and then never going up to a room—and was genuinely surprised when he showed her into what she's pretty sure is one of multiple living rooms and mixed her an actual Belvedere and tonic. It's a good cocktail, not something that's meant to get her too drunk to say no, and Roman's only ever been respectful, almost more hands-off than she'd like. Still, she sets the glass right at the edge of the coffee table so she can keep an eye on it.

"Do you want another coaster?" Roman says.

"What?"

"To put over the top of your drink." It doesn't even sound like a joke. It sounds like he'd actually give her another coaster if she wanted one.

"No, it's just habit," Tabitha says. "I don't think you're the roofieing type. But thanks." He didn't seem like the paying attention type either. Who knows, maybe he'll turn out to be the going down on her type too.

Roman chuckles like it's a joke, swings his legs up over the arm of his chair, and disappears about half of his Glenfiddich. Something about the peaty smell of the Scotch reminds her of her Grandpa Ralph laughing his heh-heh laugh and saying, _You can always tell a Scot, but not much._ He probably wouldn't approve of her dating a Scotsman, even a half-English Scotsman. She decides that's another good reason to do it. Not that she needs more reasons. Roman's cute and rich and witty and has good taste in vodka. Tabitha's standards have never been notably high, and that's more than enough to exceed them.

"Monogamy's bullshit," Roman says, pulling her wandering mind back to the here and now. "But if you and I start—" He gestures with his glass, single ice cube clinking. "Fucking, dating, whatevering. All you need to know is that my family's off limits."

"You noticed that I gave your brother a blow job, right?" Roman chokes on his whiskey. "What? You were there." Tabitha tries to remember back to that night. The club was very dark and she was very high. "At least I think you were there for that part. The one who's getting married."

"Oh, Tom! Jesus, no, Tom's not my _brother_." Roman rolls his eyes to the ceiling. "He's a burlap sack of festering dicks who's marrying my sister. Totally different." He swings his legs down again and leans forward. "But actually, not so different for these purposes," he says seriously. "Just... don't fuck anyone in my family, and don't fuck anyone they're fucking. Okay? I don't want their cooties."

"Okay," Tabitha says, laughing a little, because how can you not laugh at Roman? But she's learned by now that there's more under the little-boy act. There's someone who watches women enough to notice not just that they don't want to get roofied but what they do about it, and someone who didn't assume she only sleeps with men or propose different rules for men and women. There's someone who's looking at her right now like he's trying to figure out both how much he can take advantage of her and how much she's going to take advantage of him, like in his whole short rich life he's only ever seen people dick each other over, and God, she can never resist showing people like that what it's like to date someone who has actual ethics.

He reminds her of Naomi, a little. A fun project in pretending to compromise her values while secretly teaching him to share them. And that starts with an honest, open negotiation. "No family, no family-fuckers," she says. "Got it."

As she gets to know his family, that promise is an easy one to keep. Until suddenly, it's not.

x x x x x

It takes a few months for her to get up the nerve to ask.

"Hey Rome," Tabitha says quietly, on a private jet from somewhere to somewhere else, she can't even keep track anymore.

"Yeah?" He's doing sudoku and jiggling his leg like it makes the plane go faster. She wishes she knew why he keeps turning down her offers of Adderall.

She glances up and around. No one's nearby, but she still keeps her voice low. "You know the rule about no family and no family-fuckers?"

He looks up with those hooded, vulnerable eyes. "Yeah." She can see him wondering: Is it Kendall? Shiv? Is she nostalgic for snowballing Tom? And behind the question, disgust at the thought of her finding any of the Roys remotely attractive—including him, maybe.

But it's not a Roy she's interested in. In her most calm and casual tone, she asks, "Would you be willing to make an exception for Willa?"

" _Willa?_ " The lead in his mechanical pencil snaps, and if _that's_ not a metaphor... "You want to carry her books after school?"

"Fuck off," she says without heat. She's picked up the Roy family habit of using it as punctuation. 

"I thought you were only into consenting adults."

Roman thinks it's funny to make fun of her ethical sex-positivity, and she's getting kind of tired of it, so she pretends the only jab is at Willa's age. "She's not all that much younger than me," she points out. "You just think she's young because she's so much younger than Connor."

"Yeah, well, I try _not_ to think about it, because she was definitely not eighteen the first time she soaked Con for two grand for a hotel room quickie."

That gets Tabitha steamed. "Sex work is a legitimate profession," she snaps. "Don't give her shit for that."

"I'm not giving her shit for being a whore," Roman says. "I'm giving her shit for being a whore with bad taste. All the rich assholes whose dollars she could have sucked out of their dicks, and she chose him."

"Well, I guess I have bad taste too, then," Tabitha says. "Because I think she's cute and nice and could probably use someone treating her better than anyone in your family does."

"Everything's a pity fuck with you, isn't it?" 

Roman says it so calmly that it takes Tabitha a moment to register the awful twisted way that it's true, the worst true thing anyone's ever said to her, and then she feels like she's been punched in the stomach.

"Fuck _you_ ," she chokes out over the pounding of her heart. That's not who she is, right? It's not pity, it's, it's _kindness_ , she wants to make things better for people who are hurting, that's not the same thing at _all_. "Go... go sit on that pencil, you mother _fucker_."

Roman looks her in the eye and click-clicks out another bit of lead. Then he goes back to doing his puzzle and jiggling his leg. "No exceptions," he says.

Tabitha is so angry that she storms off to the stateroom, locks the door, and falls furiously asleep. When she wakes up, she jerks off thinking about Willa and doesn't feel even a little bit guilty.

x x x x x

Tabitha watches Willa slowly stop even pretending to smile at Connor, and waits for her to dump him. But Connor's pretty clever for someone so stupid, and he keeps upping the stakes, and Willa stays.

Tabitha can't afford to outbid him. Roman, probably trying to be a better person than his siblings in his own fucked-up way, doesn't buy her fancy gifts like Kendall still, _still_ does for Rava, _why_ does he do that, and he doesn't drop cash on her like Connor does with Willa, and he doesn't try to bring her into Waystar like Shiv did with poor sad sack Tom. Tabitha still gets plenty of perks from being Roman's plus-one—like trips on that private jet, or getting to come out here to Tern Haven and see Naomi—but at the end of the day, she's still living off her trust fund, and it's a lot smaller than Connor's.

Anyway, even if Willa did leave Connor, Roman would probably still say she had cooties.

She pulls a pillow over her face and sighs into it. Roman's off doing whatever he does that will have him slinking back in red-faced at 2 a.m.—is he fucking Gerri? She's heard them on the phone, sounding a lot more intimate than you'd expect from coworkers with a thirty-year age gap—and it shouldn't rankle, but it does. It feels unfair that he won't have sex with her but still cares about who she has sex with. It feels unfair that he set a rule for her and she didn't have any for him beyond the usual condoms-and-quarterly-testing routine. But she knows she's really the one who's being unfair. No one's making her stay with Roman, if that one single rule is so intolerable, and anyway, it's only intolerable because of Willa. God knows she wouldn't touch any of the other Roys with a ten-foot pole, three layers of nitrile gloves, and an NDA. (Well, maybe Rava. And she has to admit Marcia's hot in a scary MILFy way. The Roy men have good taste in women, is really the problem.)

This is ridiculous. She's being ridiculous. She's not some teenager who doesn't know any better than to pine after what she can't have. It's not like she doesn't have options. There was that cute stockbroker who slipped her his number at the Library the other night, what's his name, Paul or Paolo or something. Or Kay, the bouncer at the Cubby Hole, who never fails to crack her up with some dirty joke or sly gossip and has always made it clear she'd be happy to take Tabitha home anytime.

And most of all there's Naomi. She should be enough to satisfy anyone—if Naomi and Willa were ever in the same room, Naomi would outshine her without even trying. Okay, she's in California and that's not ideal, but their phone sex is always scorching hot. And right now they're both at Tern Haven and why is Tabitha molesting her electric toothbrush and whining to herself when she could have her face between Naomi's thighs?

She reaches for her phone. It says she has three missed texts from Naomi. _Great minds,_ she thinks, and then she reads them.

_Naomi: fucccckk Kendall and I just got absolutely wasted together_  
_Naomi: he's pretty built actually_  
_Naomi: he cries when he comes it's adorable_

"No," Tabitha whispers. "No, no, no, _no_." 

_Tabitha: u still up_

The reply comes quickly:

_Naomi: direction is relative_  
_Naomi: still up, coming down_  
_Tabitha: you really fucked kendall??_  
_Naomi: it was remarkably non-disappointing_  
_Naomi: you should try it_

Tabitha groans.

_Tabitha: i can't, remember?_  
_Tabitha: no family. no family-fuckers. i promised_

There's a long pause of watching the three "typing" dots blink on and off.

_Naomi: fuck_

"Seriously," Tabitha mutters, "it took you that long to type that?"

_Naomi: hold on brt_

A minute later, she hears footsteps and a quiet knock.

"Babe, I'm _so sorry_ ," Naomi says as soon as Tabitha opens the door. 

Her hair's a mess and she reeks of vodka, sweat, and the come-and-latex smell of sex. Tabitha waves her to the chair by the window—not the bed, no matter how much she wants Naomi in her bed—and pours her a glass of Perrier, wrinkling her nose. "Rome's going to smell you and think I got laid," she says.

Naomi pushes her hair out of her face. "I was going to say you still could," she says. "But..."

"Yeah," Tabitha says. "But."

"I'm so fucking sorry," Naomi says again. "I just... I didn't think of it."

Tabitha looks away, trying to pretend she's not hurt. "I know," she says. "It's a stupid rule."

"And you don't usually do relationships with rules," Naomi says. "Or not like that."

"It didn't seem like a big deal when I agreed to it!" Tabitha rubs her dry eyes, suddenly aware of how late it is and how exhausted she is.

"Can you get me legacied in?" Naomi gives her a lopsided grin. "Sneak a rider into the sale agreement?"

"He said no exceptions," Tabitha says glumly. "I asked once, about Willa."

Naomi tilts her head with that investigative journalist look. "Did I meet Willa?"

"No, Logan wouldn't let Connor bring her. She's his paid girlfriend. She's wasted on him." Tabitha's carefully not mentioned her to Naomi before now, not because she's worried about Naomi being jealous—Naomi never lets herself care enough to get jealous—but because... just because. Because it would make it too real, somehow, and she doesn't want her interest in Willa to be real, she wants it to go away. She doesn't want Naomi to know about it, ask about it, think it's something to tease her about.

"A wounded, soiled dove?" Naomi nods. "Your type."

Like that. "Nay, please—"

"Sorry, sorry." Naomi grimaces and sips her Perrier. Tabitha goes to pour another glass for herself. "You're right, it's a stupid rule. But I know you. You don't cheat."

"Yeah," Tabitha says quietly. Her back's to Naomi and it's probably just as well, because she knows the look on her face says _Make me cheat. Drag me into bed. I'll be weak, I'll give in, I'll say I'm sorry later, if you just make the first move._

But Naomi won't make that move. She doesn't have many principles of her own, but she respects Tabitha's.

The Roy men having good taste in women isn't the problem. Tabitha is. The only one standing in her way is her.

She screws the cap back on the Perrier bottle like it holds all the feelings she's not supposed to have. "Yeah," she says again. "You know me."

x x x x x

Between the appetizers and the mains, Tabitha flees to the ladies' retiring room. She slumps in one of the chairs in the little sitting room set discreetly apart from the toilets and rubs her forehead. If she has to hear Logan Roy say one more thing about anything, or listen to Roman and Shiv and Kendall and Connor all digging at each other like they were born with Waystar Royco–branded ice picks in their chubby baby hands, she's going to scream.

Someone walks by her and she looks up, expecting it to be the attendant offering her an aspirin or something. But it's Willa, spectacular in a black-and-gold gown with side slits that show off her glorious legs. She doesn't look at Tabitha but turns to the mirror instead, smoothing her already immaculate hair. "Are you okay?" she asks quietly.

"Ugh," Tabitha says. "I mean... yes? As okay as I can be when I have to spend time around this fucking family."

Willa carefully reapplies her lipstick. "They're more enjoyable one on one," she says, pursing her lips at the mirror.

Tabitha huffs a laugh. "That's a diplomatic way to put it."

Willa shrugs slightly. Tabitha watches her shoulderblades move under the satin gown and tries not to think about stripping her out of it. "We're in public," Willa says, her voice still low.

Tabitha's reminded of the precarity of Willa's position. This isn't just a relationship for her. It's her work. You don't badmouth your boss on the job.

As Willa reaches for a tissue and blots her lips, Tabitha starts to wonder whether she's deliberately dawdling. She steps a little closer to Tabitha's chair every time she moves. Tabitha can just catch a whiff of her perfume—something unexpectedly citrusy—and beneath it, a hint of sexual musk, like Willa dipped a finger in her cunt and then dabbed her juices behind her ears like Dior. She thinks she's imagining things until Willa says, "Oh, I think I have something in my shoe," and places a delicate hand on Tabitha's bare shoulder, squeezing it as she leans down to unbuckle the strap on her stiletto pump.

 _She wants me too,_ Tabitha thinks with a rush of reckless certainty. _If I tipped the attendant a hundred bucks to park a cleaning cart outside the door, I could have Willa in this chair and my head up her dress in about five seconds._

She shivers with the possibility of it, feeling Willa lean into her. The musky scent is stronger now. Willa's fingers tighten, and her thumb slowly strokes over Tabitha's skin. She's definitely not imagining that.

 _I could do it,_ she thinks. _I could stop all this angsting and just... just fucking do it. No one else in this family plays by the rules. Why should I?_

Willa slides her foot back into her shoe with a rough whisper of stocking on leather that sends heat curling through Tabitha's belly. She takes her time buckling the strap. At last she stands again, but her hand doesn't leave Tabitha's shoulder. In the mirror, their eyes meet.


End file.
